Let’s take a look at the World’s smallest political quiz. I think we will find many gun enthusiasts are closer to libertarian than conservative except when it comes to drug and sex issues.
The question comes down to what types of liberty each person is for or against on an individual basis (and for widely varying reasons), which means that one's position on the political spectrum is of rather limited value for deriving any meaningful statistics--it may be interesting, but it's not all that useful.
Big government liberals are closer to being statists.
These are basically who I label (yes, labels are loaded) "socialists" and often identify as general opponents to our cause, although truth be told statism can apply equally to the "right" side of the political spectrum, and the latter do not necessarily support our Second Amendment rights, either. And then there are ideologies such as Fascism, which many on the "left" characterize as being on the extreme "right," although in reality it picks & chooses from both sides. Probably the safest thing we can say is that statists of all types are generally against the private ownership of guns...then again, you never know when one will come along and impose mandatory gun ownership.
See where you stand on the political spectrum:
http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz
The quiz pegged me at the upper-right corner of the centrist square, and I'd say that's pretty accurate. What's funny, however, is that many "liberals" I've argued with on political grounds (on other forums) have labeled me as an unreasonable "right-wing nutjob" just because I happen to have a different set of freedoms that I hold most dear. Furthermore, some make the strange and incorrect assumption that all "conservatives" (just as much a misnomer as "liberals" but anyway) are by definition statists, and therefore I'm a Fascist.
The reason that I mention this is that some of the same may be going on here in this forum except in the opposite direction.
The RKBA is not a "conservative" issue; it is a human rights issue.
That's a great observation, and I might add--speaking only for myself here--that one of the fundamental tenets of the United States is individual human rights and freedoms, the most endangered of which were spelled out in the Bill Of Rights for good measure. These are, in my view, American values, not "liberal" or "conservative" values. Not to exclude those who live in other countries, as I also consider the RKBA essential to the natural right of self-defense for everybody, but in a political and cultural sense I think it is accurate to say that the RKBA is part of this country's core.
Why? Why can't the Bill of Rights be respected in its entirety?
The country has been fighting to live up to its own creed for centuries now, and the fight continues today, fortunately with the Constitution still mostly reflecting its original intent (and changed in some ways to better represent it). During the civil rights era, I might have been branded a "liberal" or "progressive," while at present many would call me a "conservative," but I view myself as always favoring progress toward the kind of country that the Constitution says it is, which includes the
individual RKBA. In my opinion, giving such broad power to the federal government over state and local governments is not a form of statism or authoritarianism when it involves preserving our individual rights.
